Monster
by Le Belle Dame Sans Merci
Summary: She'd forgotten it all, all her past gone in a flash. She grew up to be Isabella Swan, the youngest detective to ever take down criminals in Raiden history, but things started to happen and the Monster, the one she'd forgotten, began to reappear.
1. The Monster

Monster

By Le Belle Dame Sans Merci

Isabella tossed and turned in her bed, the noise of her bed springs a quiet testament to her movement. The darkness that filled her room would have intensified the sounds, but they were drowned out by the yelling and crying that filtered into the small space of her room through the walls. Like every night her parents fought, she buried herself beneath her cover and let the tears of her frustration fall.

"Why," she whispered to no one, her only companions in the room being the shadows that stood in the dark. "Why do they have to fight? Why can't they just be like other parents? Why can't they just love each other?"

She let her words flow freely, giving them the life in the darkness that they could never have in the light. She would never say this to her parents, too afraid of what Daddy would do.

Daddy, the man that use to tuck her in every night with a kiss, the man that use to wake her up early on Saturdays so they could watch cartoons together, the man that would pick her up when she'd fallen and would whisper, "I got you, baby girl."

That man was gone, though. In his place was the Monster, a ferocious beast that looked like her Daddy, but could never be him. The Monster drank all the time, never going anywhere in the house without a glass of some amber liquid. The Monster yelled and ranted and raved, his loud voice seeming to fill every corner of their townhouse. The Monster also beat her mother.

Her mother had tried to hide it, the evidence of the Monster's deeds. Every time a new offensive blemish would appear on her mother's skin, Izzy would ask her what had happened, but she'd just brush her off, throwing out some unconvincing comment about falling or running into a wall. It didn't take Izzy long to realize that the wall was the Monster's fists. She may only be nine years old, but she wasn't stupid. She wasn't blind, either.

To see the dark spots on her mother's pale skin brought tears to her eyes. Sometimes, after a rough round with the Monster, her mother could hardly move, any attempt of rising from her bed drawing a cry of pain from her lips. Seeing her mother like that made her hate the Monster more than anything else in the world, but is also made her hate her mother. Her mommy, always so strong and beautiful, was broken and weak beneath the cruel hands of the Monster.

Izzy couldn't understand why her mother never left him instead of subjecting herself and Izzy to the Monster's torment. She'd seen women on TV just like her mother, all claiming to stay because of they loved their Monster and they knew that their Monster loved them, but surely that couldn't be her mother's reason, her excuse for keeping them here in this pitiful pretense of a home. To think that the Monster was capable of love was absolutely ridiculous. And her mother? How could her mother love a monster? He didn't deserve her mother's love.

Her face covered by the gentle weight of her pillow, Izzy murmured, "He doesn't deserve anything."

She wished she could just leave, leave and never come back, but that couldn't happen. She was too young to run away and make it on her own. Even if she found someone to take care of her, where could she go that the Monster couldn't find her and drag her back to its Hell? The Monster was a police officer, the chief of the Forks Police; it probably had countless ways of finding her and she knew that it wouldn't stop looking for her until it had her again.

She had thought that when Jessica, her sister, had left, she'd come back for her. She couldn't have been more wrong. After years of living in terror of the Monster, Jess had packed her bags and left without a backwards glance. They hadn't heard from her since January, when she'd called to assure them that she was still alive. The Monster had been nice enough, but when Jess had refused to tell them where she was, it grew angry. The Monster had yelled into the phone, its face growing red as it spewed its venom, but its hateful words fell upon deaf ears; so had Izzy's.

She'd begged Jess to come back for her, to help her, but Jess had only sighed and whispered tearfully, "I can't." Her words had killed any hope Izzy had had of escaping.

The pain and disappointment those words drew Izzy out of her thoughts and back into her room. It was quiet. She uncovered her head and strained her ears against the silence, trying to hear anything, but there was nothing to hear. Not a cry, not a whimper, not even the heart-felt apologies of the Monster as it helped her mother up from the floor and into their cold lonely bed.

The silence was unnerving. Sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of her bed, she moved to get closer to her parents' room in order to find out what was going on. Treading softly, she made her way to her bedroom door, but stopped short when she heard a knocking from the other side.

"Izzy? Baby girl, are you awake in there," the Monster called through the door.

"Daddy?"

"Open the door, sweetheart."

The words weren't bellowed at the Monster's preferred tone, but, instead, were spoken at slightly above a whisper; reminding her of her Daddy's teasing tone when he coaxed her downstairs for pancakes and mindless cartoons. Moving cautiously, Izzy opened the door and let the Monster in.

It stood there smiling, a ghost of her Daddy's bright smile. Its eyes took in her room from wall to wall before it made its way to her bed and sat down.

"Come here, sweetheart," the Monster commanded softly. As Izzy approached the Monster, she tried to ignore how ridiculous the situation was. The Monster never called her 'baby girl' and 'sweetheart', the endearments having died along with her Daddy the day the Monster took over. She was scared. This was made evident by the tell-tale pounding of her heart in her small chest as the Monster lifted her up and placed her on its lap, cradling her like her Daddy use to do. She hoped it couldn't hear it, terrified of what the panicked sound would make it do.

"Do you love your Daddy, sweetheart?"

Such an unusual question to come from the lips of the Monster, but dutifully she answered, "Yes."

It smiled the specter smile again and kissed the top of her head.

"Of course you do, baby girl. Always my good girl. You'd never leave me, would you, Izzy?"

Confused, she looked up into the Monster's eyes. The pale blue had been eaten away by the dark black of its pupils and the whites were bloodshot.

"Never, Daddy," she lied. Another rare smile spread across the Monster's face.

"Good girl. Why couldn't your mother be more like you? Thinking she was going to leave me," the smile turned cruel, "She's not going anywhere now."

Izzy shuddered at the Monster's expression.

"Daddy, what's going on? What happened to Mommy," she asked as she squirmed in its arms. Her voice rose in terror as she demanded, "What did you do to my Mommy?"

It laughed a laugh as dark and terrible as the night.

"Stupid whore thought she could leave me, but I made sure she can't go anywhere."

Her small hand rose from her lap and smacked its face. In an instant, the smile became a snarl and the cradle of the Monster's arms, a cage.

"Little slut," it yelled as it tightened its arms around her, "You gonna leave me, huh, Izzy? Just like your mother. That whore thought she could leave me, take my family away from me. Said she couldn't stay here anymore. Did she tell you that? I fixed her, though. She's not going anywhere, not any more. Should have done the same thing to your sister. You're not gonna leave me, baby girl. I won't let you."

The Monster spit each word out, making each one a filthy expletive, and it tightened its arms more. Izzy squirmed, trying to get free, but the Monster crushed her small body to its wide chest.

"Daddy, please. Daddy, let me go," she begged. Tears filled her eyes, overflowing onto her cheeks.

One of the Monster's hands released her, but quickly attached itself to her neck, choking her. Fear, raw and terrifying, consumed her as she tried to pull the hand that was squeezing the life from her body away, but she wasn't strong enough. Her lungs desperately begged for air, but she couldn't get enough to go down her constricted throat.

"I won't let you leave me, Izzy. I just won't let you."

Those were the last words she heard before she fell into the comforting arms of unconsciousness, finally free from the Monster.


	2. In the Forest

Monster

By Le Belle Dame Sans Merci

**So I realized I'd forgotten this in the last chapter. Disclaimer: I do not own any of the amazing Twilight cast. Tis a pity!**

_It was so dark, as if the moon and the stars had been stolen from the sky, leaving just the pitiless black of night. The ground beneath her was cool and unforgiving, the hard flat plain causing an ache in her back. She was shivering from the cold, her thin tank top and sleep shorts a feeble barrier to the strong might of the late winter wind._

_Her head was pounding to the rhythm of her heart, the sluggish blood steadily increasing her pain. She reached up to feel her pounding head and found her hair matted and clumped with drying blood and the area sensitive to touch. A shudder, not from the cold, but one of terror, ran through her small body._

_What had happened to her?_

_Sitting up, she closed her eyes and tried to think back to what had occurred before she'd awakened. Nothing happened. 'Maybe I'm just tired,' she thought as she tried again, but, once more, nothing happened. Tears began to fill her eyes. 'Why can't I remember?'_

_It wasn't just that she couldn't remember what had happened to her, she couldn't remember anything at all. Not her name, not her family, not her home…nothing. It was if someone had wiped her mind clean of all memories, leaving a blank slate and a broken girl. The tears that had threatened to fall made good on their promise and began to rain down her chilled cheeks, racing toward the hard ground. _

'_I've got to get out of here,' she thought as she wiped the blinding tears from her eyes and stood up. Her legs shook and threatened to buckle, hours of disuse making them weak. _

_She looked around her, her lack of memory making her surroundings seem frightfully alien and foreign. She could just make out the outline of bare tree branches as they reached toward the heavens, their leafless stems clawing at the empty night air. The limbs were a dull dark gray against the lightless black expanse of the sky. Shadowed forest stretched out for miles on either side of her, the walls of outlandish trees appearing to reach toward forever. Had she known this place? Had she been here before?_

_Fresh tears of frustration welled in her eyes. She didn't know where she was, or how she'd gotten there. How was she supposed to know which way to go?_

_She stood there as the wind whipped her hair through the air and forced its way through her clothes to graze her skin beneath them, its chilling touch bringing goose bumps to her quivering flesh. Her head was throbbing and her body trembled as it tried to revive the heat within her. She wanted nothing more than to collapse back into the frozen arms of the Earth and wait for unconsciousness to claim her again, but she couldn't._

_Something inside of her told her to fight the impulse to yield to the ground's icy siren call, to run until she'd left this nightmare in the shadows of the trees. The urge to run had been drowned out by the pain and coldness of her body, but grew until; finally, she took the first step._

_Each step was an inward struggle to overcome the pains of her body, but she kept moving. She didn't know where she was going; only that she couldn't stay. She had to get away from here._

_She walked for what seemed like hours, the fight for each step causing time to slow down and lengthen. She felt like she was going nowhere. Every time she glanced up at the forest, it seemed as if the same trees returned her tired, wary look._

_They mocked her, those trees. Their limbs danced and waved in the wind as if wishing good bye to any chance of her making it out of the terrifying shade of the forest. The shadows of the trees crawled upon the forest floor and crept across her path, the dark limbs like fingers as she passed beneath them. Seeing them made her shudder. The trees were the monsters of her nightmare, ghouls and ghost that bred fear within her. _

_However, as time dragged on and her body begged for rest, the trees grew less frightening, their dancing becoming a beckoning call to come and join them; their promise a promise of forever. Morphing from monsters, the trees became lovely fae, beautiful creatures luring her deeper into the darkness of the forest; their only intent being to keep her from the light. She was tempted to take it, to settle into a nest of roots and let it cradle her until the dark bliss of sleep consumed her, but she knew that if she stopped walking, there was a chance she'd never move again._

'_I don't care,' she thought as she sagged on her feet, her weight seeming to have increased twenty times since she'd started her doomed journey. She staggered over to a nearby tree, her footsteps heavy and taking her every effort to make. With a grateful cry, she leaned against the tree, surrendering her weight to tree and letting it bear her up. She closed her eyes and, for once, was appreciative of the darkness._

_Lost in the surprising comfort of the rough bark of the tree's tall trunk, she relinquished control of her senses, concentrating only on the beating of her tired heart._

_She hadn't heard him coming, hadn't sensed his presence until his large warm hand wrapped around her cold thin arm. It brought a voice to her head, a man's voice muttering murderously, "I won't let you leave me, Izzy. I just won't let you." _

_Terror rushed through her veins to the far reaches of her body and panic ripped a scream from her lungs, the sound a shrill, desperate cry of fear and distress. _

"_Fuck," he exclaimed, releasing her arm and stepping away from her, "Shit, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you!"_

_ She couldn't see his face through the tears. "Ple-please don't hurt me," she cried, her body no longer shaking with cold, instead taking to quiver in utter fear._

"_What!" He ran a hand roughly through his hair. "I'm not going to hurt you!" His yelling echoed through the silence of the forest, bringing to her attention just how alone they were._

_ He could see it that she didn't believe him, that she didn't trust him, but he didn't care. He just wanted to know what the hell she was doing here._

_ "Are you trying to die, kid? Why the hell are you out here in the middle of the woods by your fucking self?"_

_ "I-I-I don't know. I don't know how I got here." He took the time to take in her appearance, her thin night clothes that couldn't protect a fly from the harshness of the winter wind, her wild hair that was caked with dust and forest debris, her bare feet that were covered in scratches and dirt. What had happened to her?_

_ Sighing, he ran another hand through his hair. "What's your name, kid?"_

_She couldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know," she whispered quietly, her voice that of a broken spirit._

"_What do you mean?"_

"_I can't remember who I am. I-I can't remember anything," she looked up at him, putting every bit of pleading and begging into her eyes, "Will you help me? Please will you help me?" Tears continued to fall from her eyes and just looking at her broke his heart._

"_I'll help you." _

_Before the words were out of his mouth, she had her arms wrapped around his neck as she clung to him, her body shaking as she sobbed onto his shoulder.  
"Thank you. Oh, thank you," she cried, over and over. He wrapped his arms around her small body and held her, letting her cry her unneeded thanks. When she didn't let go of him, he picked her up and began to walk in the direction he came. _

_ She fell asleep in his arms, her head filled with the steady beating of his heart and the flowing rhythm of his breathes._

_She woke up on a rough cot beneath an equally rough blanket, the material itchy and irritable against her skin. She sat up and looked around her. She was in an office and a man sat at the large desk that dominated the space._

"_Where am I," she asked, pulling the blanket about her like a shield._

"_You're in the Raiden Police Department headquarters, sweetheart. You're safe." This eased her fear a bit, and then she remembered she hadn't left the forest alone._

"_What about the boy, the one that helped me?" The man raised an eyebrow._

"_We found you laying on the doorstep, sweetheart. There was no boy."_

**So I'm really hoping that you all enjoyed this chapter. I had a rough time writing it, but I liked what I got. Don't forget to review, please and thank you!**

**Belle**


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